Youth
Falls Church native Amaker's selection of W.T. Woodson High School in Fairfax, Virginia, was controversial. Amaker's mother was a Fairfax County teacher, which at the time gave her the freedom to choose where her son went to high school. She felt Amaker would be able to play on the varsity team at Woodson as a freshman, because coach Red Jenkins had been impressed with Amaker's youth summer league game performances since the time Amaker was ten years old. Amaker's dominance at Woodson has been cited as the reason why teachers do not have the same freedom to choose that they formerly did. Amaker did earn the starting job by December of his freshman year.
His mother, a high school English teacher, was his first coach. His mother attended his practices and graded papers in the coaches' office. His coach, Jenkins, referred to him as "T-bird".
Amaker, who grew up in Fairfax, was the first freshman to make varsity in W.T. Woodson history. He played on the 1983 McDonald's All-American Team and was also named to the Parade All-American team. Krzyzewski had been in town to evaluate Johnny Dawkins and got a chance to see Amaker play. Amaker had wanted to play for the Maryland Terrapins because his sister Tami went there and he idolized Maryland star guard John Lucas. He was recruited to Duke by assistant coach Chuck Swenson, who would later serve as an Amaker assistant.
Read more about this topic: Tommy Amaker
Famous quotes containing the word youth:
“Organize first for knowledge, first with the object of making us know ourselves as a nation, for we have to do that before we can be of value to other nations of the world and then organize to accomplish the things that you decide to want. And ... don’t make decisions with the interest of youth alone before you. Make your decisions because they are good for the nation as a whole.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“His youth was distinguished by all the tumult and storm of pleasures, in which he licentiously triumphed, disdaining all decorum. His fine imagination was often heated and exhausted with his body in celebrating and deifying the prostitute of the night, and his convivial joys were pushed to all the extravagancy of frantic bacchanals.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)